“40 years on”
A sermon preached by Brian Smith, former Bishop of Edinburgh at St
Michael’s Church, Cornhill, on Thursday 29 September, 2016, marking the
40th anniversary of the ordination to the priesthood of Stephen Platten,
Edward Cardale and Ralph Godsall, members of the same clergy cell as Colin
Gough, Christopher Moody and Graham James.
It is good to be here celebrating Michaelmas together, and also celebrating the 40th
anniversary of your ordination, and 40 years of your cell.
Last year I was celebrating Michaelmas, and preaching, at St Michael’s Church
Broadhust, in Botswana. Colin Gough is currently in Botswana teaching at the same
place as I was. He too may be, today, celebrating and preaching at that same church!
So we can regard him as celebrating with us here, with the same angels and
archangels.
I think back to ordinations around 1976. You will recall how in those far off days the
ordinal in the Book of Common Prayer began with the sermon. I recall (and I have
shared this memory with some of you before) one really splendid ordination sermon
reminding the ordinands of their calling to be available to all sorts of people in all
sorts of ways.
“When you are called out to see someone at midnight, don't say 'I wasn't
ordained for this!' When you are left clearing up after all have left the vestry,
don't say ‘I wasn't ordained for this!’ When no one turns up to assist you
prepare the hall for the village concert, don't say ‘I wasn't ordained for this!’"
It was a splendid sermon, and nothing detracted from its power, when we proceeded
with the liturgy, and immediately had the lesson from the Acts of the Apostles,
chapter 6.
"It is not right that we should wait at tables....appoint someone else to do it."
We glimpsed a church within which different attitudes could be forcefully expressed,
within minutes of each other, and no one bat an eyelid. However such a relaxed
attitude to difference was certainly not to characterise the next 40 years.
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And today we are marking an anniversary, not just of 40 years of priestly ordination,
but of 40 years of your cell. (or is it 41years of the cell!!!)
It is a ruby anniversary. I looked up the significance of ruby as meaning 40 years, and
read that the ruby - symbolises health, wealth and wisdom as well as passion. It is
your cell to a T.
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Think back to 1976 – we can note some interesting facts about that time:
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In 1976 the church in the US approved women priests.
In 1976 the (allegedly liberal) doctrine report of the Church of England,
Christian Believing was published.
In 1976 The 1975 Worship and Doctrine Measure became effective focussing liturgical debate in the church.
And it was also in 1975 that the first personal computer was marketed in the
US, and from where it began to invade our own shores.
These very few months set the scene for a church that came to be dominated by
heated debates on:
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the place of women in ordained ministry
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liberal theology – recall how the phrase ‘Bishop of Durham’ came to replace
the phrase ‘Bishop of Woolwich’;
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liturgical revision – for and against series 1, 2, 3, ASB, Common Worship….
- recall Alan Bennett’s remark, “They’ve given up the old Eucharist, and are
experimenting with something called Series 1 2 and 3. It doesn’t sound like
religion to me. It sounds like baseball.”
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And communication in and by the church has changed.
Who could have guessed in 1976 what “A blogging Archbishop” might be?
In 1976 winds of change were gathering to blow like a gale across the Church of
England. They would test whether it was built on sand, or, more stably, on rock.
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And so we might ask, what gives stability in life.
E M Forster reflects on this in “Howard’s End’
He is writing in 1910, of changes reshaping society.
There is a dialogue reflecting on the intense mobility affecting modern civilisation. It
is one where people are ‘on their bike’ seeking work. Where populations move.
Where international businesses move employees across the globe. Where people are
torn from their roots, and have no concrete place that is their true ‘home’.
Seeking meaning in such a world will be difficult. Forster writes that in such a
world…..
……. we shall receive no help from the earth. Trees and meadows and
mountains will only be a spectacle, and the binding force that they once
exercised on character must be entrusted to Love alone. May Love be equal to
the task!”
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May Love be equal to the task!”
And of the church we might to ask whether love alone can make it a place where
meaning may be found, once its roots in Doctrine, Liturgy, Ministry and its
engagement with society are simultaneously subject to dramatic change.
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BUT 40 years on we need to look forwards as well as back.
I was struck that Michaelmas is the anniversary of the birth in 1547 of Miguel de
Cervantes – author of Don Quixote. [This ought not to have surprised me, given that
he was born in Catholic Spain, and name was Miguel!!]
One of Graham Green’s novels I have always liked is Monsignor Quixote – a pastiche
based upon the earlier and much longer work by Cervantes – Don Quixote.
Many of you will know the story, (set in Spain in the late 1960’s). [Not least because
it was recently dramatized on Woman’s Hour.]
Father Quixote, an elderly dedicated parish priest in a small Spanish village is by a
quirk of fate unexpectedly elevated to the rank of Monsignor – to the horror of his
own bishop, (and indeed against his own wishes.) Preferment is ever thus!
As a result he has to leave his beloved parish.
At the same time, his friend, the local Communist mayor, an atheist, loses an election
and is deprived of his role in the village.
The two men decide to go on a journey together in Father Quixote’s very old Seat 600
car, which he calls after the earlier Don Quixote’s old horse - Rosanante.
Both men have been whisked out of their “comfort zone.” Father Quixote is removed
from his traditional parish ministry, the mayor from his political life.
Both journey together in friendship.
They have copious wine and cheese – contemporary restrictions on the use of alcohol
while driving seem to be fairly relaxed.
They follow a semi-structured path of exploration around Spain, neither being really
clear where they were going. They meet with strange ‘adventures’. And conversing on
the journey each becomes open to the other. They share doubts and questions about
religion and politics’. They explore the difference between believing the faith,
understanding the faith and accepting the faith. One commentator noted that in a book
of less than 200 pages, there are explored 132 issues of theology.
And on that journey something of faith, and something of love, grows and deepens,
through their simple friendship, and their journeying together.
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Father Quixote remarks to the mayor “In your company…I think more freely than
when I am alone. When I am alone I read – I hide myself in my books. In them I find
the faith of better men than myself…and I tell myself that I must be wrong.”
He confesses the questions and doubts that arise for him in his theology, and how
these coexist with his faith. He remarks that “Disbelief haunts my belief”. But as we
follow them on their journey something else is growing.
In the journey of friendship, they each speak from within their traditions, Catholic or
Marxist. They question much in the old textbooks of their faith or their politics. This
affects the mayor with his Communist Manifesto as much as Father Quixote with
Heribert Jone’s textbook of Moral Theology.
But whatever we saw developing between them required two things’ - friendship, and
a journeying together over a period of time. They are stuck together in the same small
rusty Seat.
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Each new appointment in ministry moves one out of a comfort zone, where one had
learned to be the priest in that situation, and moves one on to something new. It can
sometimes be unsettling.
Quixote knew unsettlement in becoming a monsignor and losing his parish. For the
Mayor it was losing the election, Elevation on one hand, and deprivation on the other
had identical effects.
In a cell such as you formed we see persons who made a commitment to go on a
journey together over the years that were to come. We see persons who have known
changes in life as each was called to move out of one “comfort zone”, and to be a
priest in a new milieu. And we see friendship, existing in an ever-turbulent church.
Father Quixote and the Mayor found in their rusty Seat a place of deeper meeting and
renewal. A rusty Seat is perhaps not a bad image of your clergy Cell.
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In the desire to find something of meaning in the midst of turbulence and vanishing
certainties, E M Forster had asked the question “Will love be equal to the task?”. And
he asked the question with the hint that love alone, may not be fully equal to the task.
But there is something in your Cell life that is more than just friendship or love. It is
that commitment to stick with each other through thick and thin, and to face together
issues that life throws up on your various journeys. Such a commitment may seem a
little thing when put alongside the demands of the great theological virtues of Faith
and Hope and Love, but it makes all the difference to it all.
We are today celebrating ministry, but also celebrating that which has enriched that
ministry within a turbulent church. And that enrichment comes through those two
things - mutual commitment and friendship.
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And it is worth recalling that Jesus himself journeyed around the countryside with his
disciples, encountering many ‘adventurers’. As a result he was moved to call those
with whom he journeyed not servants, but friends, and our joint celebration today is of
priestly ministry, friendship and commitment, as seen in this cell. And for it we give
thanks.
AMEN
The Rt Rev Brian Smith
[email protected]
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